I know this has been discussed a lot in the past but I could do with some advice. I have a 1.6 (Petrol) Meriva and am towing a Pennine Pullman folding camper. The noseweight for the Meriva is 50kgs and the maximum weight of the Pennine is 900kgs. The problem I have got is that we came back from Wales yesterday and every time I went over 50 on down hill stretches it started to snake and sometimes on rough bits of the motorway. Ended up coming back at about 45mph and keeping a very close grip on it. The tyre pressures are right on the Pennine (35PSI) and the noseweight was exactly 50kgs, although I will admit I had to add some extra weight to the back to get it down to 50kgs. Was that my problem and if so should I empty the front locker a bit more to reduce it rather than add weight at the rear? Or am I safe to exceed the 50kg nosewight limit? Or could it be that I hve too much weight on one side, the awning poles are what I am thinking of, or even is it something I haven't thought of at all? We have tried to distribute the weight around the camper as evenly as possibly.
The only other clue may be that the car seemed a bit 'bouncy' when travelling along, almost as though we were going through waves.
I need to sort this one quickly as it was a nightmare.
Back loading to reduce noseweight is not good, keep the heavy bits over the axle if you can, heavy objects right at the front and back will cause a pendulum effect. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you added extra weight to the back, try shifting things around then take it out and see if it makes a difference.
As Sproz says, it is almost certainly the weight you put in the back. To avoid repeating a long story, read my comments in the following thread where I had a similar experience with my Conway Crusader:
When it comes to fairly short low sided trailers, back loading does not apply, at least anywhere near as much as tall long caravans.
You were coming back when this happened so how was it going?
Did you have more weight in the boot of the car coming back? if you did, did you put some more air in the car tyres.
In my experience bad loading giving too light a nose weight starts around 38-42mph, snaking or the 'feeling' of snaking starts at 50-52mph. I had this problem and what I found was cheap rear tyres on the car was the problem, tyre walls were to soft.
The trailer being nose up won't help either especially down hill, are you towing level or slightly nose down?
I might also add 50kg is recommended but there's nothing to stop this being somewhat higher (if your cars maximum allows)
I have found the nose weight to be critical. It is not necessarily good in my experience to be as high as possible, my previous car towed much better with a lighter noseweight than the maximum. I would try experimenting by moving the weight around a bit. As already stated, tail loading will not have as much effect on a FC as on a caravan, but is a practice to be avoided. Far better to keep the weight over the axle if possible. If nothing else, there is less chance of it being damaged in an accident.
Personally I've found the weight distribution far more important than noseweight. The more weight you have over the axle the better.
50kgs noseweight on a 900 kg trailer should be fine. Some caravanners tow 1500 kgs with only 70 kgs on the hitch..
I wouldn't recognise a Meriva if I saw one, so will ask the question regarding its weight, rear suspension and overhang.
If the Pennine is 900kgs (fully loaded) then the kerbweight of the Meriva should be about 1050 kgs to comply with the recommendation (not law) of 85% max.
Gary mentioned soft tyre walls causing him a problem.
This is where the cars suspension and overhang over the rear wheels is important too. Ideally you want a rock hard suspension and no overhang over the rear wheels. Think of a well maintained Citroen Xantia. It didn't win tow car of the year for nothing. The fact you are limited to 50 kgs noseweight suggests to me that you have a fairly soft suspension.
When towing a caravan it is possible to feel/sense the bow wave of overtaking H.G.V.s or large white vans. It first pushes the rear end of the caravan away from the overtaking vehicle and then the front of the caravan as it comes alongside. A really firm suspension and heavy enough tow car will pull the caravan into line immediately . A soft suspension will allow the caravan to start pushing the rear end of the car around. Once this motion has started a snake can easily build up.
Tyreman
As already pointed out the trailer should be towing level or slightly nose down.
If ,ba ,you had the load evenly distributed (as normal) and still experienced unusual snaking in weather conditions that wouldn't normally distract I would be looking at mechanical problems. Loose anything that should be tight eg hitch bolts trailer and car, tyre & suspension deterioration and wear, worn wheel bearings etc....its a long list and good luck
Thanks all for your thoughts. Having studied them I have come to the conclusion that my next course of action is to move the awning and poles forward from the very back to more over the axle. This will obviously increase the noseweight so I will then have to remove some of the weight from the front locker to bring it back nearer to 50kgs. The ironic thing is that I never had a problem until I started to get paranoid about the noseweight and started moving things around to reduce it. The end result was that I ended up pushing some of the heaver items to the rear to compensate for the weight on the front. If I had just removed some of the stuff from the front locker to the car I would probably have been alright.
Tyreman, the Meriva (it's a blown up Corsa made into an MPV) has a kerbweight of 1325kg with a fairly short overhang so the combination should be fine. The rear tyres are brand new and were inflated to the recommended pressure for a full load. I did consider spring assisters because of the low nose weight but nobody seems to do them for the Meriva. I am hoping that it is just a misloading problem as, as I said above, it was alright until I started fiddling.
Back loading to reduce noseweight is not good, keep the heavy bits over the axle if you can, heavy objects right at the front and back will cause a pendulum effect. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you added extra weight to the back, try shifting things around then take it out and see if it makes a difference.
I think you will find that the only way you will get the pendulum effect is if you have a - ( minus ) weight on your draw bar.........I beg to differ and say that there is nothing wrong with loading the rear of a van to get the nose weight down ( how else can it be done) as long as things cant move around there should be no problem..............If the manufacturers took a bit more attention as to the nose weight of the vans coming out of the factory then I think that would address the problem.............The majority are far too heavy ( empty ) so what chance have we when we load the van up on go on holiday.
it's ok to load items to compensate for a heavy noseweight but not by the way of putting awning and poles right at the back...everytime that scenario happens you will get a pendelum sway on a slight alteration of lanes or overtaking and coming back into the previous lane, it will sway as it just levels into the lane again..juggle the distribution again and get the main heavier items across the axle line then work forward to get the hitch head noseweight to 50kg, getting the same amount of weight on each side is critical too over each wheel ..get the bias correct, not all the heavy stuff on one side because it's easier to put in as it's near to you
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Topic: Snaking problem
